Once again Warren Buffet is in the news insisting that the wealthy should pay more taxes. The problem is that the real wealthy, like Warren Buffet, would not be affected by a hike in income tax rates.  He and most of the really wealthy hold their wealth in the form of unrealized capital gains, not the type of income he proposes to raise taxes on. 

      A raise in the taxes on earned income is designed to prevent people from becoming wealthy.  In a 2004 interview with Charlie Rose, Buffet’s wife Susan said that his lifelong ambition was to become the richest man in the world.  He is using his influence in Washington to insure that he has no competition.

      If Buffet thinks men like him should be glad to pay more taxes, why doesn’t he pay his own?  He has been fighting the IRS since 2002 for the  over $1 billion in taxes that he owed than. And his unpaid tax bills are adding up.   Just last year NetJets, one of his companies sued for $642.7 million in taxes and this year the IRS is suing NetJets for an additional $366.3 million in unpaid taxes.

      Buffet is a snake oil salesman. He gets in bed with politicians and takes home the bacon.  When the president killed the Keystone Pipeline, Buffet won.  His Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad ships the oil.  The $700 billion bailout of U.S. banks saved his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs.  He pays his lobbyists $9.8 million a year and he gets his money’s worth.

      Buffet is the kind of crony capitalist that is a cancer on the American character. 

I took some notes of comments made in the room as I watched the last debate. It’s a little late to be publishing them, but my computer was in hospital until yesterday.

It’s interesting that President Obama thinks that Americans who earn $250,000 are in the top 2 per cent of wage earners.

Romney pays a lower tax rate than bus driver, only if you forget that he pays taxes twice, first at the corporate level and then again at the personal level.

Mitt’s plan will not costs 5 trillion because with lower corporate rates we’ll have twice as many people paying taxes.

Obama, “Your plan lacks specifics.  Americans would never take  such a sketchy deal.”  Oh, but we did, with you.

“Millions of women rely on Planned Parenthood.”  I invest heavily in charitable issues that are important to me.  If Planned Parenthood is so important to you, donate to it. 

It’s insulting that Romney said, “They brought in binders full of qualified women.”  But not that Obama’s white house pays it’s female staffers 13% less than it’s male staffers.

This will not be another Bush White House.  George bush was a liberal.

Romney, “Our party has been focused too much on big business. I'm for small business.”  Yeah!

Obama, “It’s tax cuts that took us Down.”  No. It’s Frannie and Freddie that Bush warned about over and over again, but Obama and his Dem buddies used the warning as a charge of racism.

It’s so annoying that he keeps going back to George Bush

“Osama is dead,” but the monster lives. And you blew the cover of the doctor who helped you find him.  Think anyone will trust you now?

“We passed toughest Wall Street reforms in history.”  Yes.  Reforms so complicated they make it impossible for small businesses to comply.  Only huge companies have the resources and staff to sort through the garbage.  Dodd Frank is for shit.

Same health care as Massachusetts.  If a state legislature decides to devise a method for handling health care, that’s fine.  For the feds it’s unconstitutional.  I don’t care what the Supreme Court Says.  It’s unconstitutional

You had two years with full majorities and you made no attempt, not one to devise an immigration plan.  Don’t tell me you care about the problems undocumented immigrants deal with. Oh, he did help the immigrant problem.  He sent them guns so they could shoot their way in.”

You also had two years to resolve entitlement issues.  You made NO attempt.  Don’t tell me you care.

You said you’d cut the deficit in half.  You made no attempt.  Don’t tell me you care.

The Arizona law lets officers stop people just because they look illegal.” Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

I sat down with Republicans and Democrats and begged them to fix the system.”  Liar, liar pants on fire.

“Mitt Romney is the last person to challenge China.  His portfolio is heavily invested in China.”  So is yours asshole.

“I called it a terrorist attack the very next morning in the Rose Garden.”  Two problems.  First, if you knew it was a terrorist attack, why did you skip your morning intelligence briefing and fly off to party Vegas.  Second, why did you spend the next two weeks trying to convince us that it was a stupid film that no one watched? 

“Replay that gibberish.  What did he say?  He met with her two months ago and then 3 months later, and then one month before???  It makes no sense. He's so full of shit.” 

“I believe in the 2^nd amendment.  I understand that people like to hunt, but we don’t need AK47s for that.”  He doesn’t understand the 2^nd amendment.  It has nothing to do with hunting.  It has everything to do with the fact that if a citizenry is well armed, they have less a chance of being overrun by totalitarian rule.

He wants to “Catch violent impulses before they occur”?  What does that mean?  Is he suggesting that we do some kind of DNA scan and try to eliminate the violently inclined at birth?

He has cut taxed 18 times. Yeah for those who don't pay taxes.

 “When I was president.”  Ah, Freudian slip. He already sees himself as a past president.

“I believe in free enterprise and self-reliance.  Everybody should do their fair share and play by the same rules.”  What a joke!

The whole energy debacle.  In fact  off shore permits cut by 62% and on-shore cut by 1/3. 

“We can't elect someone who thinks women should not work outside the home.”  Romney hired more women in top positions in Massachusetts than any other governor in any other states, percentage wise more that Obama has in the White House.

Obama is “Deliberate in his dishonesty.”

          Mr. Grijalva, you lie. There is no way you do not know the truth, so it has to be an intentional lie. There was no provision in the immigration law, that allowed "police officers to check an individual's immigration status based solely on suspicion" ("Proud of opposing SB 1070," Yuma Sun, June 28, 2012). A police officer must have justifiable cause to stop the individual, perhaps for a broken tail light or for speeding. Then he asks for identification.  Everyone, all of us, each and every one, are then asked for identification. You know that.  So you lie.

         There can be only one reason for you to perpetuate such a lie. You want to divide us. You want to create problems where there are none. We are all Americans, and we are the only country in the world that welcomes people from every corner of the earth.  We are proud of that.  We recognize the fact that America's greatest asset is her immigrant population.  We are energized by their enthusiasm, strengthened by their commitment, reawakened to a sense of what is means to be American.  We simply want to welcome them at our front door.

           You should be working on a plan to  open that front door, to reform policies, to make it easier for people to immigrate,  but you don't want to do that.  That wouldn't get you re-elected.  You need the division, the anger, so you foment it.  Shame on you.

              After a hiatus recovering from a leg injury, I have a new project in response to two prevailing mantras: "The Horatio Alger story is a myth. There are no rags to riches stories in America" and "The rich aren't doing their fair share." My project? Celebrating the rich. The first installment: John Paul Jones DeJoria hair products billionaire.

          John Paul Jones DeJoria was the second son of an Italian immigrant father and a Greek immigrant mother in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. When he was two his parents divorced and by the time he was nine he began selling Christmas cards and newspapers with his older brother to support his family. Eventually they were both sent to an East Los Angeles foster home.
           DeJoria, troubled and tough, spent much of his youth in a street gang in East Los Angeles. When his math teacher at John Marshall High School told him he would "never succeed at anything.” He made a conscious decision to change the direction of his life.
          Jo

hn Paul graduated high school, served honorably in the U.S. Navy, and then worked in a variety of jobs: selling encyclopedias, photocopying machines, dictating equipment, and insurance, working as a janitor, pumping gasoline, driving a tow truck, and repairing bicycles. At times he was homeless living in his car and he collected bottles to stay afloat.
          Finally he began to climb through the ranks, first securing a marketing position with Time magazine and quickly promoted to Circulation Manager. Then he found his passion, securing a position in a hair product company. Within months he was promoted to National Manager. Eventually, with a $700 investment, he teamed up with Paul Mitchell to launch the shampoo company that made him a millionaire. He earned his second fortune with Patron Spirits, a tequila maker.
         DeJoria is a pillar of the Austin community whose philanthropic efforts are legend: Grow Appalachia which helps families fight obesity and poverty by creating gardens, Mineseekers, Food4Africa and Blazer House. a patron-level sponsor of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Nelson Mandela’s Aids Awareness Project ‘46664.
           Join me in celebrating John Paul Jones DeJoria.

Because Antonin Scalia disagreed with the Supreme Court’s majority opinion on Arizona’s immigration dispute, Paul Campos, A prominent law professor at the University of Colorado called him a “blowhard” and an “author of hysterical diatribes.” “Scalia… has in his old age become an increasingly intolerant and intolerable blowhard: a pompous celebrant of his own virtue and rectitude, a purveyor of intemperate jeremiads against the degeneracy of the age.”  A UJCLA professor of constitutional law added that Scalia had gone crazy, “finally jumped the shark.”  They agreed that their only hope is that his increasing uncontrolled rage will trigger an aneurism (sic).”

Hello?  Scalia is the intolerant blowhard?  The left has absolutely no ability to argue inssues.  All they know is character assassination.

  President Obama has indeed become “The Imperial President.”  He bypasses congress by not enforcing laws sworn to enforce: immigration laws, marijuana laws, the Defense of Marriage Act.

           He has usurped congressional powers allowing arms of the executive branch to enforce laws that congress refused to pass. The EPA enforces Cap and Trade.  The NLR implements the Orwellianly titled “Free” Choice Act.  The FCC regulates the internet. Department of Education provides to school districts who accept a national curriculum.

          He violated advice and consent rules by giving recess appointments when congress was not in recess.

          He invokes executive privilege to prevent congress from seeing thousands of papers related to Fast and Furious relying on “precedent.”  Executive privilege protects the president’s ability to openly discuss issues with his staff.  Neither the president nor Holder knew anything about Fast and Furious, so what’s to protect?

         Even if we agree that his decisions immigration or EPA or drug laws, we must insist he work with congress, and he has refused to, imperiously shutting himself off.  If we allow one branch of the government to usurp the powers of the others, that is tyranny. 

         I wonder if Joseph Rouff was serious, (“America needs more socialism,” Yuma Sun, June 19, 2012).  My first hint is his suggestion that we should be more “civilized” like Europe and provide for free health care and cast a broader social net for the needy. Has he noticed that the socialistic states of Europe are crumbling?

         And we are quickly heading in the direction of Europe.  Fully ½ of us are being fully supported by government programs, and 70 per cent get some form of financial assistance.  That’s quite a burden for the ever dwindling percentage of wage earners.

My second hint that he might be joking was his bemoaning our military spending.  Whether or not we should be fighting those wars or keeping troops all over the world is arguable.  And we probably spend more on defense than all the other countries of the world combined; but when you consider the entire budget, our military spending is a drop in the bucket.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, from 2001 to 2011 we spend 1.3 trillion on the military. That's 4.4 percent of the total budget: $29.7 trillion.

          With regard to income taxes, Mr. Rouff says that we need to raise taxes on the rich. “Rich folks pay only 16 percent taxes while many of the rest of us pay 30 percent taxes. This is totally unfair.” He is talking about those rich people who have investment incomes.  What he doesn’t consider is that that income was taxed first at the corporate level at a 35 per cent tax rate and then taxed again at the individual level at 16 per cent.

         And if he is one of the “Some of us pay 30 per cent taxes,”  he is making upwards of $300,000 a year. Shut up!

          I also think he might be joking because he’s a man, and I don’t think men like being on the dole. Women like being taken care of.  That’s one argument against giving us the vote.  We like our safety nets.  For the most part, men like the sense of fulfillment they get from providing for their families. Oops.  I just saw the top of your head blow off.  Okay, maybe that’s way too broad a generalization, but it certainly describes the world I’d like to live in.

          My most ardent argument against a more socialistic state is that it corrupts the human spirit. As Denis Prager says, we end up like those shiftless youth in England who out of boredom, go to Europe and piss in every fountain they can find.

          Furthermore, it encourages us to rely on government rather than relying on ourselves and our God.  I agree with our founders.  God intended us to be free, and “when we sacrifice our freedom for security we lose both.”